


In the Village / In the Nest

by typical_art_dork



Series: get in the car, loser, we're healing from trauma [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Coming Out, F/F, Fluff, Found Family, Light Angst, M/M, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:40:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23974627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typical_art_dork/pseuds/typical_art_dork
Summary: "They kicked me out," Robin says, all in a rush. Her voice has been shaking, tripping over itself this whole time, but this comes out smoothly.Oh. Oh, shit.Or: When Steve gets a frantic late-night call from a homeless Robin, he takes her to the only house he's ever been in that feels like an actual home: the Byers' house.(A story of found family and self-acceptance.)
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper/Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington
Series: get in the car, loser, we're healing from trauma [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1728592
Comments: 43
Kudos: 414





	In the Village / In the Nest

**Author's Note:**

> This is angsty at first, but I promise it has a happy ending. Loosely based on the song "The Village" by Wrabel. 
> 
> Quick lil edit before I forget-- there's a playlist for this on Spotify called "In the Village (In the Nest)" so if you want a soundtrack you've got one! :)
> 
> **In a flashback scene, the f-slur is used once. If this causes any discomfort for you, I've put astericks before and after the scene to serve as a sort of reminder to skip over it. Happy reading; stay safe <3

NOVEMBER

Steve gets the call just as he’s closing up Family Video for the night. 

It’s late, around nine, and after a harrowing, Robin-less day of rewinding tapes in the back room and shelving new releases in the vacant, empty store, Steve’s beat. Kieth is nowhere to be found-- jumped ship hours ago when he realized it was a slow day, the bastard.

After noon, the rain started up. It’s been showering all day, a gentle lapping at the glass windows of the store, and the melodic lull of the downpour made it surprisingly easy to get lost in the therapeutic work of rewinding the tapes that have been returned in the past week. When Robin’s here-- which she usually is, Steve thinks with a pang of worry-- they spend “rewind duty” splayed out on the floor of the back room with the TV in it, checking the tapes for scratches or inconsistencies before they re-shelve them. Today, he’d sat there alone, spacing out as Hellraiser played on a loop, barely flinching at the gore. 

In all honesty, Steve hasn’t gotten a lot of sleep lately. The weight of what happened at Starcourt is always a familiar buzz that’s nestled in the back of his mind, greeting him like an old friend when he falls into his bed every night alone. Steve’s parents have been away on “business” for months, and sure, he’s used to his big, empty, skeleton house, but when he’s got the ghost of that night playing out in an endless spiral in the back of his head, the house just feels emptier. And Steve feels more alone. 

But right now, in the cold of the night and the glossy darkness of Family Video, he just wants to go home. 

So Steve’s like, ‘screw it’, and he’s halfway out the door when the phone next to the cash register rings. 

Sighing, he pivots on his heel and marches back towards the counter, shoving the phone up against his ear and letting his mind wander to the comfort of his heated car-- Family Video gets cold as shit during the winter, and the November chill is already settling in fast in Hawkins. He kind of figured that’s why Robin’s been radio silent all day-- the dork probably caught a cold from riding her bike all around town. She should really ask him to drive her places more; he’d jump at the chance for some social interaction that didn’t involve chatting away with thirteen-year-olds all day.

“Hello? We’re closed,” he says, itching to just hang up and get the hell out already. There’s a migraine lapping at the recesses of his brain-- he probably needs reading glasses. Staring at movie titles all day has been a strain. 

God, he sounds like Hopper. 

“Steve,” Robin’s voice chokes out. She sounds like she’s crying, and Steve feels his pulse spike. He’s never heard her cry before-- not when she’d come out to him on the dingy bathroom floor of the Starcourt mall, not when angry Russians had jammed a needle pumped full of drugs into her neck, not when That Thing had killed Billy in front of all of them. Steve shakes his head, as if that will push the intrusive onslaught of memories to the back of his mind again. 

He knows her parents aren’t home a lot; always at work or volunteering at church. If Robin really is sick, they probably aren’t there to take care of her. Which means she’s probably been stuck at home all day, in pain. Shit. 

He knew he should’ve gone over there after Kieth left. 

“Robin? Robin, what’s wrong?”

There’s a beat of excruciating silence, and Steve prays to whoever the fuck might still be listening that she hasn’t passed out on him. He tries to dredge up memories of when Will or Dustin or any of the kids have been sick, grasping onto a faint recollection of Mrs. Byers rambling about cold compresses and humidifiers, the latter of which he’s positive he doesn’t own. 

Didn’t Dustin say something about Gatorade once? He’d mentioned anti-oxygen, or antioxidants, or some shit. . . Steve’s panic always freezes his brain up, but damn. He’s useless. 

Then, Robin’s voice seeps through the line again, crackling faintly as the connection phases in and out. 

“My-- my parents. . .” She can’t get the words out, and Steve’s losing it, here, because now his brain is running through all these scenarios lightning fast: they’re dead, they’ve both lost their jobs, they’re getting a divorce, they left her sick and home alone all day and her best friend couldn’t find it in himself to get the fuck over to her house to check up on her even when their asshat of a boss had already left--

“They kicked me out,” Robin says, all in a rush. Her voice has been shaking, tripping over itself this whole time, but this comes out smoothly. 

Oh. 

Oh, shit.

“Fuck,” Steve breathes, a heavy weight settling in his chest. He’s a goddamn idiot. 

“Robin, oh God, I’m so sorry--”

And she’s crying, like a switch has been flipped, heavy sobs leaking through the receiver, and it’s like a cold iron fist is closing tighter and tighter around Steve’s heart because she could be anywhere and she could be freezing and she’s alone alone alone--

“I need somewhere to stay,” she cuts him off, her voice a desperate, mangled thing. “Please.”

“Of course,” Steve assures her, latching onto this. She can stay with him, or maybe Mrs. Byers, because she’d probably be way better at taking care of Robin than he would. “Of course, I’ll pick you up, just tell me where you are and I’ll be there! Robin-- hey, listen to me.”

She goes quiet, just sniffling, and he wants to throttle her parents for reducing her to this. 

“This isn’t your fault. It’s theirs.”

“Steve--”

“Got that? It’s their fault.” His voice is firm-- there’s no room for an argument from her. Not about this. 

A second stretches by, winding around Steve’s windpipe. The rain patters faintly on the windows; he tries not to think about Robin, shivering and wet, huddled in some shitty phone-booth on the side of the fucking road, but the image floods into his mind and sticks stubbornly. 

“It’s their fault,” she parrots, and then tells him she’s at a payphone two blocks from her neighborhood, a suitcase in one hand and a fistful of quarters in the other. 

Steve pushes 80 on the drive there. 

He manages to fish his Party-issued walkie talkie out of the backseat as he floors it, and he presses the call button with shaking fingers, his thoughts a jumble of images he can’t even begin to unpack right now-- Robin, shivering and crying; Robin, cowering as her parents yell at her; Robin, alone. 

“Code red, this is Steve. Is anyone there?”

He flicks on the windshield wipers as he waits. 

“This is Steve. It’s a code red. Is anybody there? Dustin? Lucas?”

God damn it. What the hell could the little shitheads possibly be doing right now that’s keeping them from answering him? They’re always calling him in the middle of his freaking shifts, begging for him to get Robin to cover for him so he can drive them to the arcade or the movies or goddamn Mike’s house. Steve can feel the hot rush of anger building in his chest again, that I-have-to-punch-something feeling that lights him up when Max shows up on his front porch with a black eye from her piece-of-shit stepdad or Mike calls with a trembling voice as his parents scream at each other in the background or someone on the street calls Robin That Word, and shit, Robin, he needs to get to Robin--

“Steve? Is everything okay?” Will asks, his voice crackling through. God bless this kid. 

Steve heaves a relieved sigh. He can literally feel his fucking blood pressure lower. 

“Will, buddy, can you, uh-- can you lemme speak to your mom for a second? It’s kinda serious.”

“Yeah, of course,” the kid assures Steve, and Jesus Christ, he loves Will Byers. 

“Steve?” Mrs. Byers’ worried voice leaks through, tinged with concern, and Steve nods before remembering she can’t see him. 

“Mrs. Byers, hi-- listen, I’m so sorry for calling this late, it’s just--” he pauses, the words sticking to the roof of his mouth. He can’t out Robin-- he has to be careful. 

“It’s Robin. She-- her parents got really mad at her and they kicked her out, and I don’t want her to stay with me because-- I mean, I can barely take care of myself, I just. . . I know it’s a lot to ask, but just until I can find an apartment for us--”

“Steve,” Mrs. Byers says, her voice soothing in a way his own mother’s has never been, “Of course she can stay with us. We’ve got a guest room now for when El stays over-- Robin can sleep there.”

“Thank you,” Steve breathes. “Mrs. Byers, thank you so much, you have no idea how much this--”

“It’s not a big deal, honey,” she says, genuine as hell, and Steve feels this ugly knot tug its way up in his throat at how fucking maternal it all feels, “and call me Joyce.”

“Okay,” he says, his eyes darting to the gas station Robin described earlier. “Okay, thank you. Thank you so much, Joyce.”

“No problem, sweetheart. Tell Robin she can stay for as long as she wants.”

Click. 

He’s still white-knuckling the wheel when he catches a glimpse of her, huddled in a phone-booth by some lonely gas station a couple of streets over from the Byers’ neighborhood. 

Steve pulls up hastily beside the phone-booth and hops out of the car to help Robin with her suitcase. 

She’s trembling from the cold when he meets her outside the payphone, wrapped in a cardigan that looks like it’s been thrown on last minute, and Steve’s hit with another wave of anger at her sorry excuses for legal guardians, because it’s got to be below thirty out here. 

He throws his coat off and pulls it around her shivering form, guiding her to the passenger’s side before settling her suitcase in the trunk. He can hear her crying in the front seat, and he forces his own tears back. 

This is about Robin, not him, dammit. 

When he hops into the driver’s seat, she’s got her hands over her face, shaking apart like a leaf in the wind. He lets his car door swing shut and just sits for a second before lunging across the console and pulling her into a hug. She stiffens at first, then melts into it. Steve and Robin are definitely platonic soulmates, because they fit together perfectly in moments like this; she nestles her head into the crook of his neck and just cries, and he tries not to do the same as he rubs circles into her back and the rain continues its attack on the roof of his car. 

They must sit there for at least twenty minutes, tangled up on the shoulder of the rain-soaked road as the storm rages on outside. Steve tries not to count the seconds as they pass, but it’s easier to zone out than listen to Robin in pain like this. All he can do is hold her, because if he opens his ignorant mouth and tries to comfort her, he knows he’ll probably just make it worse. 

**Once, they’d been walking out of the movie theater together, just talking and laughing about whatever the hell they’d just watched-- Steve can’t remember for the life of him, just that it was weird as shit and Robin had found it hilarious-- and this asshole shoulder-checked Robin, like, plowed right into her, and yelled “Shut up, fag!” as he passed. Steve had whirled on the guy, shoved him back against the hood of the nearest car, and punched him across the face before Robin could even respond. His hand hurt like hell for a week afterward, but it was worth it.** 

Turns out the idiot was from school-- he was in Robin’s theology class, some redneck Reagan supporter who thought a verse in the Bible justified bullying kids. Fucking asshat. 

But Robin had been completely unphased until Steve had reacted the way he did-- he remembers saying something to the guy, vaguely, then Robin dragging him frantically away, whisper-yelling in this weird voice he’d never heard her use before. She was saying something about chilling the hell out, but all Steve could focus on was that asshole and the sour memory of calling Jonathan Byers a “queer” two years ago. He’d stumbled a few feet away from Robin and curled over a nearby garbage can, dry-heaving into it as he blinked the image of Jonathan stiffening in that alley all those years ago out of his head. 

Even then, Robin didn’t cry. She’s one tough cookie-- Steve’s heard Hopper say that once or twice about El, in that fatherly voice he adopts when she’s around. 

Now, in the crushing quiet of Steve’s car, Robin pulls gently away, swiping hurriedly at her eyes like she’s ashamed, and Steve feels that pang in his chest again. He hates this. He fucking hates it. 

“Hey,” he says into the darkness, and Robin’s eyes jerk up to meet his. “Are you okay with staying with the Byers’ tonight? I just figured. . . y’know, my house is all empty and sad, and Joyce-- she’s an amazing mom--”

“Wait, you won’t leave me, right?” Robin asks meekly, her voice smaller than he’s ever heard it-- smaller than it was that night in the bathroom. 

“No,” Steve breathes, shaking his head, “no, of course not. I’ll stay.”

Her eyes are dark and gleaming in the glow of the streetlamp outside; Steve wishes he could smooth out her features into something more reminiscent of Robin, because her expression just looks so. . . pinched and broken and wrong. But he can’t. He can’t fix her. 

“I’ll always stay. I’m never leaving you,” he says. Leave it to Robin Buckley to turn him all sappy in a matter of minutes-- damn. 

“Good,” she replies, nodding mechanically like they’ve settled some sort of business transaction, and Steve just nods back, not really knowing what else to say, and floors it to the Byers house like it’s a hospital and Robin is bleeding out. 

The blur of suburbia that passes by them should be comforting, but all it does is rattle Steve’s nerves more. Robin’s eerily quiet, the car is eerily quiet, all of it is just too fucking silent-- even when she’s upset, she always shoves some Cyndi Lauper mixtape in his tape player and lets the songs spiral on and on, crowing through the car like some tangible representation of her sadness, because Robin’s poetic as shit and wants her life to have a “soundtrack”, even the messy parts. That’s what she told him when they had laid side-by-side on the hood of his car in the woods a month ago, looking up at the starlit sky; Robin pointed out the different constellations to Steve as he chugged the last of a coke, rattling off the Greek legends that went with each little group of stars. They’d picked out a star for themselves that night-- Robin had named it Molly, after that hot redheaded chick that played Claire in The Breakfast Club. They listened to the movie soundtrack all the way to Steve’s house. 

Now, in the darkness and the press of rain and unsaid words, Steve wills her to pull a tape out of her pocket, to say something, even to start crying again-- anything to let him know she’s still in there. 

Nothing. 

He tries not to break down as he pulls into the Byers’ driveway-- they’ve left the porch light on for him and Robin, a yellow-glinting beacon, and that lump has risen in his throat again. Shit. 

It’s only when Robin’s door slams shut that Steve realizes she’s out of the car, and he races to unbuckle his seat belt and grab her stuff from the backseat. He wrestles the suitcase from her hands and guides her to the door, pretending not to notice when she shrinks away from him slightly. Under the dim glow of the porch light, he can make out the smudge of a fresh blue-black bruise on one side of her face, and he grits his teeth against the rush of anger that wells up in his chest at the sight. 

“Steve,” Robin says quietly, gesturing vaguely towards the door, and he springs into action, knocking slightly frantically before Robin grabs him by the elbow and pulls him back just as Joyce opens the door. 

“Hi, guys,” she greets, like this is even in the fucking ballpark of her normal, and lets them inside, calling for Will over her shoulder. The kid bounds over to her from somewhere in her living room, and she smiles warmly at him. 

“Honey, go get Steve and Robin some towels, okay?”

“Sure thing, Mom,” Will says, nodding at Robin and Steve before he rushes to their hall closet and pulls it open, wrangling two fluffy towels from the top shelf as Joyce ushers Robin further inside, letting the front door fall shut against the storm outside. 

The first thing Steve registers is that Joyce has got Jonathan and Will and El all gathered in the living room, ambling around the space to light candles and flick off the overhead lights. Jonathan’s set up a pile of blankets and pillows on the couch for El, and the girl is meandering around the Byers’ tiny kitchen in a flurry of movement-- Steve stumbles further inside and sees that she’s filling two mugs with hot water. Will returns with the towels, gingerly handing them off to Steve and Robin as El drops a tea bag in each cup from her place in the kitchen. Jonathan waves at them, smiling that soft smile that all the Byers seem to share. The house smells faintly of cinnamon, and Steve’s searching gaze falls on two candles flickering on the mantle as Robin towels her hair off in the foyer. 

She looks out-of-place and uncomfortable despite the welcoming atmosphere, and Steve’s starting to worry that bringing her here was the wrong choice. He’s just about to pull Joyce aside and ask if they can leave when Robin darts into the living room, eyes flickering nervously from Jonathan to Joyce to Will before she finally locks her gaze on the carpet. 

Steve comes up behind her and places a grounding hand on her shoulder, unsure of what she wants to tell them. 

“Mrs. Byers--”

“Call me Joyce,” she says, smiling at Robin with the same sincerity and kindness that she’d aimed at her own son just minutes before, and Steve silently thanks the universe for Joyce Byers and her seemingly-endless capacity to love children. 

“Joyce. . . I-- I just wanted to say this because I feel like-- I mean, I don’t want to stay here if you don’t want me here, and--”

“We do want you here,” Jonathan cuts in, and the quiet genuinity in his tone startles Steve. Robin looks shocked too, and she blinks rapidly as if she’s trying to process that while Will clears his throat. 

“You know, Robin,” the kid says, all serious, “we won’t turn you away no matter what your parents are mad about.”

El halts mid-stride while she’s carrying the tea over as Robin tears up. Steve knows why; it’s no secret that Will is different. And Steve doesn’t mean that in the he-was-stuck-in-an-alternate-dimension-for-a-week way, or the he-was-possessed-by-an-otherworldly-monster way, either. 

He thinks he first figured it out one night when he was babysitting the kids. They were all gathered over at Mike’s, and Steve was more than willing to make the drive out to supervise while the kid’s parents went on their first date in a while. The little dipshits were huddled in the Wheelers’ basement with Steve splayed out on the couch a few feet away, hunched over another one of their little D&D games, chatting over one another about some sort of winter formal a few months away. 

“Obviously, I’m going with El,” Mike said when Max asked, and Will looked up from the game, his face oddly pale beneath the dim yellow glow of the overhead light. 

“No, El and I are going as friends, remember?” Max asked, like this was the most obvious information in the world. “She dumped your ass.”

This pulled a couple of laughs from Dustin and Lucas, but Mike wasn’t amused. 

“Yeah, but--”

“But nothing,” El piped up, lifting her chin defiantly as she linked arms with Max. “Max is my date, Mike.”

Mike’s face twisted, and Steve remembers sitting up, suddenly interested as the little shithead crossed his arms and glared at El and Max. Dustin and Lucas didn’t seem bothered by El’s wording, just a little amused at how she seemed oblivious to Mike’s mounting frustration. Max just glared back at him, her face flushing as red as her hair when El leaned in closer to her, tucking herself into the girl’s side. 

“What, did Max turn you into a fucking lesbian?” Mike finally snarled, and Steve jumped at the chance to intervene, because, holy shit, Ted Wheeler was NOT raising Steve’s kid to be homophobic. 

“Hey, hey, hey,” he snapped, pointing a finger at Mike like he was the kid’s mom, which, okay, was kind of weird, “we don’t use that word in a derogatory way, dipshit. Got that?”

Mike blanched, blinking rapidly at Steve like he didn’t know who he was looking at. 

“I wasn’t--”

“Yes,” Steve stressed, “you were. Now shut the hell up before you dig your grave any deeper, Wheeler.”

A beat of silence hung heavily in the air, until Dustin, bless him, had laughed. 

Max joined in, giggling as Mike’s face reddened and Steve leaned back against the couch, unphased.

The room settled back into a comfortable lull of chatter after Max and Dustin laughed at the baffled look on Mike’s face, and that was that. But Steve couldn’t stop his eyes from drifting to Will; the kid was hiding trembling hands under the coffee table, staring blankly down at the game board as the other kids talked over each other about the theme for the Winter Formal (“No, tell us, Dustin, why would ‘gnomes’ be the theme? We’d love to hear your evidence for that claim--”). 

After Steve had dropped everyone but Will off that night, he turned to the kid huddled in his backseat, scrambling slightly for the right words before just barreling forward with his spiel. 

“Will, about what Mike said. . . listen, kid. He’s at a difficult age. He's gonna be an asshole about certain things, and. . . I just don’t want you thinking everything he says about certain people is true. I. . . I’m not always gonna be there to defend everyone, though, so you gotta stick up for yourself, because, well, I know for a fact that me and the rest of those little shitheads support you.”

Will didn’t say anything back, just nodded mutely as Steve pulled into his driveway, but Steve still caught a flicker of a smile on the kid’s face as he got out of the car. 

So. Will is like Robin, and Steve knows this, and Robin knows this, which is why they’re both presently fighting back tears at the kid standing in front of them. Dammit, Steve really is turning into his mom. 

“I. . . they kicked me out because I’m gay,” Robin confesses, still looking down, her face an unreadable mask. Steve wants nothing more than to crush her in a hug right now, but he thinks Will is about to beat him to the punch: the kid’s eyes are welling up, and Jonathan looks at him with gleaming eyes before fixing his quietly calculating gaze on Robin. 

“Well, they’re assholes,” he says, a gentle kind of fire in his eyes, and this startles a surprised little laugh out of her. She jerks her head up, and they lock gazes. 

“Not completely.”

Joyce shakes her head. “Anyone who would turn their own children away because of something that’s out of their control isn’t fit to be a parent, sweetheart.”

And that does it: the dam breaks. 

Robin sobs raggedly, falling forward into Joyce’s embrace. The woman just curls her arms around her, unphased, as El sets the tea down on the coffee table and wraps her arms around both of them, tugging Will and Jonathan and Steve in until all of them are holding Robin in this tangle of arms and she’s still crying but it’s less desperate now, and the weight that’s been pressing and pressing on Steve’s shoulders since her phone call lifts a little as she sighs shakily and melts into the embrace. 

“Nothing,” Joyce says, “Nothing could make us turn you away when you’re in a time of need. Anytime you need a place to stay, we’re here.”

After Starcourt, Joyce offered Steve and Robin a ride home from the hospital to stay with the kids at her house overnight; none of them were up for driving home to an onslaught of questions from their parents (or a lack thereof, in Steve’s case). So they piled into the back of her van and, later, into the pile of blankets she’d set up in the living room, curling against each other as the kids fell dead asleep in a big jumble on the couch. Steve still remembers the way Joyce had looked at them under the flourescent lights of their hospital rooms that night-- like they were her own. Like she knew Robin, despite having only met the girl hours ago. 

After that night, Steve was over at the Byers’ house more and more. The kids saw it as a safe place, a haven tucked away from the stilted normalcy of their own homes. They could talk openly about monsters and alternate worlds and flickering lights without questioning parents hovering over their shoulders, so Steve took to acting as a sort of babysitter while Joyce was at work and Jonathan was away at college. By extension, Robin spent much of her time there, and she quickly fell right into place in the kids’ little group; Steve once heard El and Max talking about how she felt like a sister to them-- of course, they’d never tell her that. But he’d heard it, so it counted, damn it. 

“Thank you,” Robin whispers, feather-light but genuine in the descending stillness, and Steve knows in that moment that in time, she’ll be okay. 

Slowly, they all disentangle themselves, and El dives for the tea eagerly, offering Steve and Robin a mug. Robin takes hers gratefully with a watery smile, and Steve whispers a thank-you as the kid settles on the couch. 

“Alright, guys,” Joyce says, patting Jonathan on the back as she heads for her bedroom, “The guest room is right across the hall from Jonathan’s. Sleep for as long as you want, alright? I’ll have breakfast made by the time you’re both up.”

They chorus their thanks as she disappears down the darkened hall, and El settles under the blankets on the couch, looking pensively up at Robin as she swipes a hand under her eyes for the second time that night. Will hugs her goodnight and heads for his own room as Steve sips his tea. 

Jonathan smiles at both of them before leading them down the hallway that leads away from Joyce’s room, pointing at a door to the right as he swings open the door to his own bedroom. 

“That’s the guest room. Sleep well, guys.”

“Thanks, man,” Steve says as Robin fiddles with the doorknob. 

Jonathan nods, like, ‘of course’. After a moment, he turns back towards them, his eyes settling on Robin. 

“And Robin?”

“Yeah?” She shrinks back slightly under Jonathan’s stare. Steve squeezes her hand. 

“We’re all here for you, y’know. No matter what.”

\---

When Steve blinks awake the next morning, he’s sprawled out alone in the Byers’ guest room bed, sunlight slanting through the blinds and dappling the room in a halo of light. Robin’s probably already up, because the dork gets up bizarrely early for a teenage girl. Steve doesn’t know how the hell she does it, she’s as bad as the freaking kids. Once, Mike had shaken him awake at six in the goddamn morning while the other little hellions yelled over each other about the proper way to cook waffles in the kitchen (“Don’t fucking touch anything until we read the directions, guys--” “I do what I WANT, Wheeler!”). It had been a hectic morning. 

In a jarring sort of contrast, this morning is slow and languid after the initial shock of waking up in an unfamiliar bedroom; Steve stumbles out of bed, hopping frantically for a moment on one foot because he’s got his other tangled up in the fucking sheets, and finds that he can already hear Joyce moving around in the kitchen. The clatter of pots and pans and cabinets being opened and shut drifts right through the walls; it’s an oddly comforting thing to hear first thing in the morning-- proof that someone else is there in the house, that someone else cares. Steve can’t remember the last time his own mother had made him breakfast. Hell, he can’t ever remember being able to hear it from his bedroom if she did. 

As Steve ambles into the kitchen, he notices three things right away: Robin and Will are sitting side-by-side at the kitchen table, Joyce is cooking something heavenly that smells like pancakes, and Jonathan’s meandering in from the living room, looking pale and vaguely nervous. 

About what, Steve has no goddamn clue. It’s not even eight in the morning yet. 

Steve says a “good morning” to Joyce before plopping down at the table across from Robin, already searching her face. She looks worlds better than she did last night, and she’s talking quietly with Will, smiling slightly, but he can still see the circles under her eyes and the set of her jaw and that damned bruise on her cheek. At least it seems like she’s adjusting well to the Byers’ place-- she looks right at home at the little wooden table, nestled up next to Will like they’re siblings who’ve known each other for years. 

Maybe being gay in Hawkins does that to people, Steve thinks; like fighting monsters together. Except in this scenario the monsters are angry human beings with guns and words for weapons instead of gnashing teeth and claws. He vows to make Robin her own nail-bat as soon as he can get his hands on some extra cash for the supplies. Family Video is fun and all, and it’s easy, but it doesn’t really pay all that well.

“So,” Jonathan sighs, dropping down into a chair beside Steve but fixing his gaze on Robin, “I know it’s super early but Nance and the kids are all coming over later and. . . uh, I’m really sorry to have to warn you about this now, but--”

“Jonathan, honey, don’t bother her with that right now,” Joyce calls from the kitchen, a note of disapproval lacing her tone. It sounds like whatever’s got Jonathan flipping his goddamn lid is something he and Joyce have already discussed, and now Steve’s intrigued and a little annoyed, so he has to know. 

Robin’s like that too, all curious when it comes to other people’s drama, and she leans forward in her seat a little, eyes wide and genuine. 

“It’s fine,” she assures him, loud enough for Joyce to hear. “What’s up?”

“Well, uh. . .” Jonathan trails off, his eyes flicking away from Robin’s awkwardly, and Steve remembers with a guilty jolt why he used to pick on the guy. He’s just. . . he sucks at social interaction, to be frank. Thankfully, Robin’s kind and empathetic and everything Steve wishes he’d been at seventeen, and she just smiles a little at him, like, ‘it’s okay’. 

“Jonathan, what’s wrong?”

“Uh. . . so, Nancy, y’know-- her dad’s this big Reagan nut, and, like, I don’t think she’d judge you or anything for being who you are, but. . . I don’t know. If you wanted to come up with, like, some sort of cover story, now would be the time to do it. Since she’s coming over later. With the kids.”

Robin just blinks. 

“Oh,” she says, the air whooshing out of her like she’s deflating, and Steve curls his hands into fists underneath the table as Will’s eyes go wide.

“The Wheelers hate gay people?” He asks, his face suddenly pale, and Steve remembers with a pang that he’s still such a kid; that underneath all the seriousness, the calm demeanor, the guarded smiles, Will is just as naive and innocent as El or Dustin. And probably scared as shit that Mike hates him now. 

Jonathan’s eyes widen, and he scrambles to explain. “No, no, of course not-- I mean, no, Mike doesn’t, and Nancy’s probably fine with it--”

“She better be,” Steve cuts in, suddenly angry for a reason he can’t exactly pinpoint. He knows Jonathan’s heart is in the right place here, but really? At ass-o'clock in the morning? At fucking breakfast? 

“It’s fine,” Robin says hurriedly, saving him. “It’s fine, I’ll just. . . I’ll say they kicked me out because-- because--”

“We could say they found out we were dating,” Steve blurts, and Robin’s eyes jerk up to meet his, because seriously, what the fuck was that?

“You know,” he says hurriedly, “since I’m out of school. Older guy, creeping on their daughter, keeping her from focusing on school--”

“Hey, that might work,” Jonathan says, snapping his fingers at Steve as Joyce sets down four plates of pancakes in front of them, and God, Steve owes this woman so much, holy shit. 

“I mean, as long as you’re not freaked out by it,” Steve assures Robin as he digs into his pancakes. They’re blueberry-- the fresh kind, where you drop the berries into the batter as you cook them instead of just buying them already made that way. Steve doesn’t know why this surprises him; of course Joyce is the kind of mom that does shit like that, adds blueberries to the batter. Jesus. 

“I’m not,” Robin says, chewing pensively on a bite of her breakfast as Will’s eyes ping back and forth between the two of them, “I just. . . I don’t know. Wouldn’t that be, uh. . . weird for you, Casanova?”

“Wh-- no!” Steve sputters, nearly choking on his third bite of pancake. Joyce smiles at him in amusement as El staggers into the kitchen in her pajamas, messy-haired and bleary-eyed. 

Robin raises her eyebrows at him, all smug, and he realizes with a wave of relief that she’s messing with him. 

“You asshole!” Steve exclaims, laughter bubbling up in his chest as Robin grins, ducking her head when he flicks a blueberry at her. It’s all melted from being drowned in syrup and butter and pancake batter, and it sticks in her hair. She doesn’t notice, just keeps grinning as Steve tries to recover from the slight heart attack she’d given him just moments before. 

“Language,” Will admonishes, smiling right along with them as Joyce rolls her eyes good-naturedly and ushers El into the kitchen to fix her own plate. 

“I thought you were, like, worried I’d fall in love with you or something, you dork!” Steve yells, and Robin shrieks with laughter as Jonathan sighs resignedly, slumping back in his chair like, ‘so much for having that conversation’. 

“Steve, that’s disgusting! I can’t believe you just said you were in love with me!” Robin gasps through peals of laughter, and El peers curiously at them as she settles into an empty chair beside Will. 

Steve huffs indignantly. “I didn’t say I was in love with you--” 

“Mrs. Byers, Steve just said he’s in love with me! How am I gonna reject him TWICE?!” Robin’s full-on belly-laughing now, lurching over the table as she shakes with the force of it and Steve joins in, too, because it’s fucking contaigous, and El’s watching them like they’ve sprouted eight new pairs of eyes. 

“‘Twice’?!” Jonathan asks, lips quirking up in a smile, and this sets Will off, too. 

“I did NOT-- I’m not in LOVE with you, you broke my wrist once and you smell like fucking ORANGES,” Steve says fiercely through his laughter, and Will cackles as Robin glares at him, like, ‘that was confidential’. 

“Robin broke your wrist?” Will asks incredulously as Robin tries to tell him it wasn’t intentional through her giggles. It’s a long story, one that Will and El will probably have to beg Robin to tell them later, because right now she can’t even get a word out. 

He freaking loves that she’s laughing again. 

And yes, dammit, Steve knows this tiny moment isn’t going to fix the sadness that will creep into Robin’s expression later in the day, or the slump that will inevitably weigh down her shoulders again once they’re done joking, but it feels a hell of a lot better than sitting in excruciating silence, wondering if it’s okay to horse around given the circumstances. Robin’s got that glint in her eyes that crops up whenever she and Steve share a moment like this-- it’s faint today, a glimmering thing shining beneath the overhead light, but it’s there, and that’s enough. 

He knows one breakfast won’t fix this-- it’s, as Nancy would say, “the heavy shit”, and it still hangs in the air even as they all laugh and Joyce tries to pretend she isn’t losing it in the kitchen as she listens in. But it’s easy to pretend, just for a while, that everything’s okay-- and Robin must get it, too, because she’s looking at him like she understands. 

Sometimes Steve wonders if the drugs the Russians pumped them full of made them just a little bit telepathic. 

“Why is smelling like oranges. . . bad?” El asks, gravely serious. “Max said perfume is good!”

“It’s bad because-- because--” Steve flounders, glaring at Robin as she laughs at him across the table. The fucking blueberry is still stuck in her hair, and Will reaches up to disentangle it as El blinks owlishly at all of them like she’s not getting the joke of it all. 

“Because it’s not on purpose,” Steve finally says, “she just naturally smells like fruit and it’s fucking WEIRD--”

“Maybe I smell like fruit because you THROW your food at me, asshole--”

“LANGUAGE!” Will shouts, slamming his fist down on the table like they’re playing a fucking D&D game, and Steve swears he hears Joyce stifle a laugh from the living room. She’s been puttering around as they’ve talked, dusting the window sills and folding up blankets that are strewn haphazardly around the house. Steve doesn’t care about the mess, wouldn’t care if he came home to a tiny house full of blankets in all the wrong places because the comfort of living in a space where you can just drag shit down onto the floor without your mother yelling at you is something he’s never had, and now, something he wishes he did. He can just picture Will and El complaining that the floor is more fun to lay on when they watch movies, and Joyce’s understanding smile, and the excitement in the kids’ faces as they dig blankets out of every chair and bed and closet in the house and drag them into the living room to make a fort. 

He’s never built a blanket fort before. 

“Yeah, Steve, maybe it’s ‘cause you throw fruit at Robin,” Will echoes her, and Steve realizes that they’re all still laughing, and it’s his turn to shoot back a retort because Will is backing Robin up now-- they’re quite the duo-- but before he can say anything, he’s cut off. 

“Okay, okay,” Jonathan says, like he’s a teacher quieting down a rowdy class. “So Robin, Steve-- are you guys both on board for the whole fake-dating thing? Just until I can figure out Nancy’s opinions on. . . y’know?”

“Sure, yeah,” Robin says, nodding as Steve does the same. 

“I wouldn’t be this neurotic about it normally, but--”

“It’s Nancy,” Steve finishes, and Jonathan looks relieved that he’s seeming to finally understand. 

Back when Steve had dated Nancy, before Jonathan Byers and interdimensional monsters and Steve’s adoption of a curly-haired kid with zero self-preservation skills and his six weird friends, he’d admired her ability to figure out nearly any problem. She’d stay up past midnight on the weekends to crank out AP homework due a week later, hunched over some long-ass equation or a historic document, just sitting and thinking until the answer came to her. Steve had never been able to do that-- just pull the right information out of thin fucking air and articulate it perfectly. But anyway, his point is, Nancy’s fucking calculating and when he’d dated her it had been a turn-on but now it’s just scary. She’d take one look at Robin’s unopened suitcase still sitting in the Byers’ living room and her choppy, short haircut and her androgynous fashion sense and her utter lack of a boyfriend, and she would just know. Steve is sure of it. 

So, if by some ugly twist of fate Nancy really is a closeted bigot, they’ll need a cover story that’s actually convincing. 

And, Steve supposes, this one is: the kids already tease Steve and Robin about being a couple on the fucking daily. Once, Dustin had showed up on Steve’s front porch, bike in tow, to ask him to drive him and the rest of the little shitheads to breakfast at Dinah’s Diner, and when Robin had shuffled out onto the porch after Steve, rubbing sleep from her eyes, the kid’s face had lit up, like, ‘caught them’. 

God, if only he knew. 

The kid has zero common sense; Steve has no idea how he has a 4.0. Actually, scratch that-- Dustin’s booksmart all the way, like, endless-fountain-of-knowledge booksmart. But when it comes to people, the kid falls a little flat. 

“So, we’ll just, like, act all coupley and shit when she’s over?” Robin asks, more so talking to Jonathan than Steve, like the guy’s some kind of expert on fake-dating. 

“Yeah,” Jonathan nods, and Will snickers. 

“What?” Steve asks, not sure yet if he should be offended. By the look on the kid’s face, though, he’s almost positive what comes out of his mouth is gonna be mildly insulting. 

“Sorry, it’s just. . . poor Robin. If I had to date a girl, I’d probably flee the country.”

Oh. Not an insult. 

El’s brows have been furrowed this whole time, like the conversation is a puzzle she can’t figure out, and Steve wonders idly if she even has any idea what the word “gay” means or why Will isn’t as interested in girls as Mike and Dustin and Lucas. Steve thinks that maybe if he could just explain it right, she’d understand why Max looks at her the way she does sometimes. 

Once, when the rest of the kids were hunched over their homework at the Wheelers’ kitchen table (some science-y AP class-- they’re little geniuses, Steve swears), El ambled into the living room where Steve had taken up residence in Ted Wheeler’s recliner. He and Karen were out on another date, trying to “repair and strengthen their relationship”, Mike had scoffed earlier in the day. El, being homeschooled at the time, was done with her required reading for the day (Chapter 23 of Little Women), and didn’t know anything about environmental science, so Steve was her last resort in the throes of her boredom. 

“Hi,” she greeted him quietly, smiling at him as she plopped down on the Wheelers’ couch a few feet away. Steve gave her a little wave, pulling himself up into a sitting position so he could actually talk to the kid. 

“Bored of the little nerd convention over there?” Steve asked her. 

She laughed quietly, nodding. “Max and Lucas are fighting about the answer to number eight again.”

Steve turned to look at the group of kids huddled around a textbook in the kitchen, eyes settling on Max throwing her hands up exasperatedly as Lucas and Dustin read aloud from the passage in question and Mike hovered on the periphery, eating chocolate-chip cookies from a tin and looking like he wished he’d signed up for on-level classes. Will just sat calmly at the bar, working diligently on some essay for a different class. 

Steve smiled at them, and he would have just sat there watching their antics if El hadn’t cleared her throat. He turned back towards her, smiling apologetically. Something in her expression had sobered as she watched Max and Lucas, like a film had settled over her eyes. Steve didn’t know what to make of it. 

“If Max and Lucas like each other,” she said in that serious, clipped tone she sometimes adopted around Steve and the rest of the teens, “why do they fight?”

Uh-oh. 

“Well,” Steve began, leaning forward in the armchair and resting his hands on his knees (“classic dad pose,” Robin would have said), “sometimes when people fight, it’s because they love each other. It means. . . they care. They’re passionate.”

El’s face contorted in confusion for a moment, and she looked questioningly at Steve as Max’s frustrated voice rose over the chatter of Lucas and Dustin. 

“But Max says she likes girls more than boys. . . so why doesn’t she fight with me?”

“Well, uh--” Steve floundered, dropping his voice so there’d be no chance of the kids hearing. “Maybe Max and Lucas fight because they’re actually annoyed with each other. But, um-- did Max tell you that? That she likes you more than Lucas?”

El nodded, her eyes flicking nervously over them. “She said. . . ‘I wish I could dump him and spend all my time with you, but not just as friends.’”

Steve had paused at that, and El must have seen something in his expression, because her eyes widened like she regretted saying anything. 

“But she said never to tell anyone she told me that, because-- are you mad? Please don’t tell Max I told you, Steve-- she said it would be bad if I told anyone, I don’t know why-- please don’t be mad!”

“Whoa, whoa, it’s okay, kiddo,” Steve assured her, waving a hand dismissively. “I’m not mad, it’s okay. And I’m not blabbing Max’s secrets to anyone, okay? You’ve got my word.” He smiled and mimed zipping his mouth shut and locking it, and El grinned tentatively back. 

But then Max yelled something about Lucas being an idiot, and she got that pinched, calculating look on her face again. 

Now, in Joyce’s kitchen, she’s got that same baffled look of concentration on her face, and Steve wants to say something, to finally explain, but she asks Robin instead. 

“Why are you. . . pretending to be with Steve?” She says, cautiously curious, and Robin just smiles at her before sending a questioning glance to Jonathan. 

“I mean, go for it,” he tells her, and Robin nods at him before leaning forward in her chair to face El. 

“Well, because. . . El, you know how you used to be with Mike, right?”

El nods, grimacing, and Will tilts his head at her like, ‘I feel you’. 

“Well, just like some girls and boys love each other, some girls love other girls and some boys love other boys,” Robin says, and El’s eyebrows furrow again, like she’s not quite getting it. 

“So. . . do you love other girls?”

“Yeah,” Robin sighs, nodding, and Steve sees Will place his little hand on top of hers on the table. His heart clenches. “And some people get very mad at people like me. They don’t understand it, and that makes them angry.”

El nods, still staring pensively at something Steve can’t see. She’s twisting her hands in her lap, working a finger under the blue bracelet Hopper gave her and twisting it around her wrist. 

“So. . . if I like Max the same way I liked Mike, will people be angry?”

Will’s eyes widen, and Jonathan straightens up in his seat a little, like, ‘whoa’. 

For the record, Steve fucking called it. 

“Uh,” Robin stammers, her face suddenly red, “Maybe. Do-- do you like Max like you liked Mike?”

El’s eyes flicker up to meet Robin’s, and she gives a tiny nod, her face pinching with worry. Steve suddenly wants to lunge across the table and hug the kid, because it hits him that of course she’s still new to all this love shit and probably infinitely more confused than twelve-year-old Robin had been about her sexuality. She was held in a laboratory and experimented on for most of her childhood, of fucking course she wouldn’t understand that she could like girls the same way she liked boys. 

“I like Max more than I liked Mike,” she whispers, and Will’s eyes well up like they had the night before, and Steve nearly sighs in frustration because he’s so damn tired of feeling so much in such short spurts of time-- it’s tiring, all the emotion. 

“Wow,” Robin says, leaning back in her chair and smiling gently at El. “That’s pretty cool, kiddo. Do you think she feels the same way?”

“She told me. . . she said once that girls are nicer than boys and that she wishes she didn’t have to date boys. She said. . . she said, ‘if we move to California for college, I can date whoever I want and not be scared about other people finding out’.” 

Steve looks at Robin, like, ‘holy shit’, and she just smiles at him. 

“Well, it sounds to me like she might be the same as you, El,” Jonathan says, smiling as Joyce reappears to gather their plates. She hasn’t heard this part of the conversation, Steve realizes, because she’s looking questioningly between all of them; El’s face is flushed, Robin’s smiling all soft-eyed at her, and Will and Jonathan are watching both the girls with a kind of distant fondness that makes something in Steve’s chest tighten and pull. 

“What am I walking in on, here?’ Joyce asks, her voice laced with that ever-present kindness. 

El snaps out of whatever trance she’s in, gazing up at Joyce like she’s her mother. Steve guesses maybe she is by now. 

“I love Max more than Mike,” she declares, so full of conviction that Jonathan chokes on a sip of his coffee, apologizing through his coughs as he tries to give El room to explain. 

Joyce, to her credit, just nods like, ‘okay’, and dammit, Steve wishes that his own mother could take notes. There’s something about Joyce that’s just so warm-- like spending rainy afternoons in the public library with Robin as she pores over some textbook for her AP Literature class; like fighting Dustin and Lucas for an open spot on the worn red couch in the Wheeler’s basement as Max and El battle it out with Mike and Will for the TV remote; like baking chocolate-chip cookies with Nancy and Jonathan in the Byers’ kitchen as it storms outside and the kids dance around the house to one of Hopper’s old records; like Robin fixing him overly-sweet coffee in the morning after crashing at his house; like watching Max beat Dustin at Dig Dug over and over as El cheers her on; like home-cooked dinners and stargazing and crackling fireplaces. He wishes his mom was like that. Had been like that. Like a parachute, always there to catch him. 

“She’s pretty and nice and she doesn’t have a messy room like Mike does,” El says admirably, and Will giggles from his seat. 

Joyce looks like she’s about to reply, but then the front door of the Byers’ house bursts open and Dustin parades inside like he owns the place, Mike and Lucas filtering in behind him, talking loudly over one another as Nancy and Max trail in last. They’re chatting at a more normal voice level, and Steve rolls his eyes good-naturedly when Will explodes out of his seat and bounds over to meet them. 

Joyce just watches the kids with this tired, pleasant expression before depositing the plates in the sink and retiring to her room, probably to call Hopper and ask if he can come save her from the inevitable chaos that breaks out whenever all the little dipshits are in one place together. They’re all yelling over one another about some campaign, one Steve vaguely remembers Dustin rambling about over the phone a couple of days ago. Nancy and Max both shoulder past the boys and drop into their own seats at the table, Nancy sitting beside Jonathan and Max plopping down beside El. 

“Morning, guys,” Nancy greets, already bright-eyed despite the fact that it’s definitely not the middle of the afternoon like Jonathan had mentioned and the kids are screaming loud enough to break the goddamn sound barrier. Steve catches Jonathan glare into space for a second, like he’s seriously contemplating just getting up and walking out the door, and Steve smiles to himself. 

“Hey, Nance,” Steve says as Robin gives her a little wave. El and Max ignore the greeting, already chatting quietly about the boys, giggling as Dustin slams the game and the manual down on the coffee table like it’s some sort of sacred text, already yelling at Mike about how he can’t spend ten hours playing today because he has “more important shit to worry about”, which Steve doesn’t really want to unpack right now because he seriously doubts the kid has any other plans on winter break. 

“So,” Nancy starts in, eyes already flickering between Steve and Robin, “you guys spent the night here?”

Robin’s eyes flick nervously down to the tabletop, like she’s searching for an answer in the splintered wood, and Steve clears his throat. 

“Uh, yeah,” he says, dragging the word out a bit. “Yeah, Robin’s. . . her parents got pissed at her so she’s gonna be staying here for a while.”

Nancy’s face falls, and she turns a sympathetic gaze on Robin. “Shit, that sucks, I’m so sorry--”

“It’s fine,” Robin says, smiling reassuringly at her. “They’ll get over it. A little teenage rebellion never hurt anyone, right? Besides, Steve’s worth it.” 

She smiles at him, winking, and Steve realizes why Robin got the lead in all the Hawkins High drama productions-- she’s the picture of nonchalance, leaning back a bit in her chair, grinning at Steve like any other girl would-- used to, he reminds himself. Nobody looks at him like that anymore. And with Robin, it’s a little unsettling, but he smiles easily back at her and Nancy seems to get it. 

“Oh,” she says, a tiny exhalation of surprise before she recovers quickly, smiling at the two of them, and Steve realizes with a wave of relief that she believes them. He shoots Jonathan a grin across the table as Nancy brightens. “Well, no matter what Robin’s parents think, I’m happy for you guys!”

“Thanks,” Robin sighs, still smiling. Steve wonders if this is weird for her, if her stomach drops when she thinks about why she’s really here or if it’s easier playing a role and pushing it out of her mind. Regardless, he needs to segue into a different topic before Nancy starts pressing them for details, which is inevitable because it’s Nancy, but before he can ask her what her winter break plans are, Dustin’s bounding over to them. 

“Guys, guys-- listen, we need adult supervision because El and Lucas--” he jerks his head in the direction of the rest of the little shitheads, “--they want to make brownies, and, like, legally I can’t allow them to do that without knowing someone’s making sure they don’t poison all of us--”

“Okay, man, we’ll help,” Steve says, ignoring Jonathan’s sigh of resignation to jump out of his seat and pull Robin to her feet. She leans into him, and he laces their fingers together (better to be safe than sorry) as Dustin practically drags him into the kitchen, where the rest of the kids have convened to argue over the directions on Joyce’s brownie batter box and dig entirely too many bowls and utensils out of the cabinets. 

“You’re supposed to use two eggs if you want cakey brownies and one if you want regular--” Mike is talking over Max, gesturing violently to the back of the box Will’s holding. 

“Bullshit. It’s three eggs,” Max cuts in as Dustin nearly drops a clear, heavy-looking tray. Jonathan lunges to snatch it from him, setting it safely on the counter beside the sink. Robin snickers as the kid mutters something about “slippery glass”. 

“Okay, dickheads,” Steve says, cupping his hands over his mouth to shout above the noise. They all turn to look at him in unison, and Nancy hides a smile behind her hand. 

“Listen up, and listen good. We’re not wrecking Mrs. Byers’ kitchen, is that clear? I want all of this--” he gestures widely at the array of bowls and whisks and spatulas and shit that they’ve dug out of Joyce’s cabinets and drawers, “--back where it belongs. We need one bowl, a mixer, a spatula, and that glass tray thing Dustin almost dropped.”

The kids grumble a little, but do as they’re told. Steve swears he hears Mike mumble something about cooking being more fun when there’s kitchenware strewn everywhere, and he has to agree with the little jerk, in all honesty. But he is NOT about to mess up Joyce’s kitchen when she’s letting Robin stay with them. 

As the kids put all the shit back in the cabinets, still bickering over the brownie recipe, Steve feels something settle on his shoulder. Robin’s tucked herself into his side, and she’s let her head fall onto his shoulder-- he can practically feel Nancy’s eyes on them. 

“You guys are cute,” she says, and Robin smiles innocently at her. 

“Nah,” Steve says jokingly, “Rob’s the only cute one here. I only keep her around ‘cause of her stupid face, actually.”

“Bullshit,” Robin shoots back, and he can hear the smile in her voice as he watches El and Max fight the boys for control of the stove, which they seriously don’t need to bake brownies-- the kids know jack shit about baking and cooking and all that crap, but they love it. Once he walked in on them making “spaghetti” in the Wheelers’ kitchen, which entailed a lot of yelling about the right temperature to turn the stove to to boil the water and a lot of marinara sauce being flung across the kitchen at unsuspecting Party members by Lucas, who had control of the jar of tomato sauce. Needless to say, Steve had stepped in to help, just as he’d done during the Great Pancake Disaster of September and the Cookie Catastrophe of October. 

And now, he has a towel slung over one shoulder and is shoving his way to the front of the group of kids, Robin hovering off to the side as Nancy and Jonathan watch from afar. Steve’s trying to show the little shitheads how to crack an egg on the side of the bowl without getting any shell in the batter, but before he can finish his spiel, El tilts her head just so and the egg in his hand cracks, the shell floating up as the yolk drops into the batter the kids have stirred into the bowl. 

“Hell yeah!” Dustin shouts gleefully, and chaos ensues. 

Much to Max’s delight, El cracks two more eggs and sends the shells flying at Lucas, who ducks out of the way just in time but goes careening into a stack of plates Joyce has wiped clean and set on the counter. Before they can fall and shatter, though, Robin’s darting forward to right them.

“Nice save, babe,” Steve says, just for good measure, and he knows she’s never going to let him live it down, but she just smiles, doing little finger-guns at him as the kids stir the chocolate flavoring into the mix and bicker about who’s getting the first brownie. 

Robin ambles back over to him, slipping her hand into his, and he hears her sigh nearly inaudibly. Now that the kids have settled into a comfortable banter and Nancy’s eyes aren’t on them like a hawk’s, she’s looking more down-- her eyes have got this far-away look in them, and it tugs on Steve’s heart. He just wants her parents to call and, like, tell her it was all an elaborate prank or something, because seeing her like this is, well. . . bullshit. 

“Max and El are holding hands,” he whispers to her, because they are-- they’ve stepped back from the group and are watching Will and Mike try to preheat the oven as Dustin wields a brownie-batter-covered spatula at Lucas. Nancy’s stepped between them like a hostage negotiator, frantically trying to talk Dustin down from whatever brownie-baking-induced madness he’s fallen victim to. 

“Cute,” Robin sighs happily, and Steve smiles to himself. 

Max whispers something to El, and they giggle and dart out of the kitchen, socked feet pattering on the tile. 

Robin lets her head settle on Steve’s shoulder again as Nancy pries the spatula out of Dustin’s hand and flicks some of the batter at his face, and that feeling that had sunk over him in the living room last night blankets him again. They’ll be okay. 

\---

Once the kids have piled into Nancy’s car, leaving Will and El to clean up the last of the mess in the kitchen as Robin and Jonathan sweep the floor, Nancy corners Steve on the Byers’ porch. 

The sun’s slinking slowly below the trees on the horizon, bathing Joyce’s yard in a hazy blue that’s highlighted by the dying rays of light. They sweep across the porch like spotlights, illuminating Nancy as she lets the front door swing shut and steps closer to Steve. 

“So,” she says, dragging the word out, “you and Robin.”

Shit. 

“Yeah,” Steve breathes, forcing that dreamy tone Robin had used earlier into his voice. “She’s. . . she’s great.”

“Uh-huh,” Nancy nods, squinting at him, and Steve can feel his pulse spike under her scrutiny. 

“Well, g’night, Nance,” Steve says abruptly, clapping her on the back and making a beeline for Joyce’s front door. Before he can duck inside, though, she’s blocking his path. 

“Steve.”

He sighs. Runs a hand over his face. Nancy's too damn smart for her own good, but this isn’t her business. 

“What? What, Nancy?”

“I just. . . you don’t look at her like you looked at me--”

“Yeah, ‘cause she’s not you,” he snaps, because he’s getting irritated now and all he really wants to do is be done with whatever this is and stumble inside and go the hell to sleep, because supervising six thirteen-year-olds is exhausting sometimes-- even when you’re not fighting interdimensional monsters. 

“Yeah, but-- Jesus, Steve, you look at her like she’s your sister.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? You’re not making any sense--”

“Why did her parents really kick her out?” Nancy asks, jutting her chin forward stubbornly. 

Steve hesitates, because he’s an idiot, and he’s tired, and Nancy’s eyes light up like she knows she’s won. Damn it. 

“I already told you-- no, you know what? I’m not doing this right now. You don’t have any right to pry like this, it’s not your business, okay?”

Suddenly, there’s a knocking from the other side of the front door, and it creaks open to reveal Robin. She’s smiling, probably at something Will’s said, and she looks peaceful and content and Steve isn’t about to ruin that, but Nancy cuts in before he can lunge inside.

“You and Steve aren’t dating, are you?”

Shit shit SHIT. 

Robin, to her credit, picks up on the situation pretty fast-- her eyes flicker nervously over to Steve, who’s probably looking like he wants to sink into the ground right now because that’s actually exactly how he feels-- and sighs resignedly like she half-expected this to happen. She steps outside, letting the door squeal shut behind her and brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. 

“What do you want to know, Nancy?”

Nancy’s eyes widen slightly, like she expected Robin to deny her claim, but she barrels forward anyway. “Why your parents really kicked you out-- if you’re some kind of rebellious influence, I don’t want you sending any of the kids down a dark path--”

“Jesus, Nancy,” Steve sighs, running a hand through his hair to keep from punching the wall of Joyce’s house or the nearby rocking chair or one of the potted plants sitting in front of the driveway, because this is crossing a line. Sure, since all of the Upside Down shit, Nancy’s been rightfully neurotic about the kids’ safety, but accusing his best friend of being some kind of bad seed is just fucked up. 

“I’m sorry, I really don’t mean to come off as rude, I just need to know that she’s not going to negatively influence any of them! That’s not a lot to ask--”

“Does being gay qualify as being a negative influence?” Robin snaps, and Nancy’s face goes beet-red. 

“Oh, shit,” she breathes, her mouth opening and closing like she’s trying to follow it up with something but can’t figure out what to say, and Steve’s about to just drag Robin inside and let the door slam in Nancy’s face when she lunges forward and pulls Robin into a crushing hug. 

“I’m so sorry,” she says, her words running together in this pained rush, and Steve feels his anger melt away. He settles against the brick wall behind him and tries not to stare. Nancy’s got Robin in a death grip, and Steve catches a flicker of shock on Robin’s face before she relaxes into the hug, her arms circling around Nancy as the sun disappears behind the trees. 

“It’s okay, it’s-- really, it’s okay,” Robin manages once Nancy’s released her. “We just-- Steve and I weren’t sure how you felt about people like me, and we just thought it’d be good if we had a cover. Y’know, just in case.”

Nancy sighs, dropping her gaze to the ground self-consciously. “I know my dad has kind of a reputation, but. . . I’m not like him in that way. And neither is Mike,” Nancy assures her. Robin smiles tentatively at her. 

“Good. Uh, thank you. For being so understanding.”

“Of course! I’m so sorry I butted in, I just. . . when it comes to the kids, I’m kind of paranoid about their safety sometimes, and--”

“I get it,” Robin assures her, one hand on the doorknob. “It’s totally fine, Nance. Have a good night.”

Steve tells her the same, patting her only a little awkwardly on the shoulder as he moves towards the door. 

“You, too-- both of you,” Nancy stammers, then pivots on her heel and marches toward her car. Dustin’s got his head hanging out the passenger’s side window and is yelling something about Nancy hurrying the hell up, and Steve grins to himself as he and Robin duck back into the Byers’ house. 

“What was that about?” Jonathan asks them, shoving the broom he’s holding into the hall closet as El and Will shove a tape into the TV-- Back to the Future again. They go crazy over the Delorean, and have been begging Steve to let them paint his car like it for the past year-- which, for the record, is not fucking happening. It’s a good movie, sure, but. . . that’s his car. 

Robin and Steve glance at each other, then laugh a little. 

“Nothing gets past your girlfriend, dude,” Steve says, slinging an arm around Robin’s shoulders. 

“Oh, God,” Jonathan sighs. “I’m sorry. . . well, I’m guessing she took it well, then?”

“Yeah, she was super sweet about it, actually,” Robin assures him. “She’s kinda terrifying, but. . . really kind. You picked a good one, Byers.”

Jonathan grins at her, and Steve feels something tug at his heart. 

“Yeah, I did. . . and hey, now you won’t ever have to hear Steve call you ‘babe’ again.”

This earns a laugh from Robin, and she covers her face with her hands as Steve rolls his eyes, because, come on, it wasn’t THAT bad. 

“God, yes, that was atrocious--”

“Oh, shut up Buckley, that was BRILLIANT improvisation on my part and you know it!” Steve huffs faux-dramatically, shoving past a giggling Robin to fling himself down onto the Byers’ couch beside Will and El. 

“The emotion, the raw FEELING--”

Robin fake-retches, and Jonathan laughs as Steve continues to ramble about his Oscar-worthy performance as her boyfriend. 

Eventually, El and Will shush him, gesturing towards the movie that’s playing, and Steve glares at them with mock offense as Robin just laughs harder, dropping into the armchair on the right side of the couch. Jonathan just plops down on the floor, bringing his knees up to his chest like a little kid. 

As Marty McFly rambles about needing to get back to the present and the sky outside darkens and Joyce emerges from her bedroom to cook them all dinner, El turns to Steve and pokes him in the shoulder to get his attention. She tilts her head towards the TV, and the volume lowers automatically, earning stares from Jonathan and Robin, who are actually somehow still invested in the film despite already having seen it, like, a million times. 

“I have to tell you something,” she says to all of them, a tiny smile playing at her lips. Robin leans forward in her chair expectantly, and Steve nods at El like, ‘go ahead.’

She takes a deep breath, eyes flicking up to settle on Robin. Will seems more interested now, placing a hand on her shoulder supportively. 

“Max is. . . my. . . girlfriend,” she says, as if she’s trying the word out, and her face blooms into this open-mouthed smile that Steve’s only ever seen behind the counter of Scoops Ahoy and during the dancing contests she and Will have to Hopper’s records sometimes. 

Robin beams back at her, all shiny-eyed, and Will squeezes the kid’s shoulder, smiling to himself.

“That’s awesome, El!” Steve exclaims, smiling at Robin across the room. ‘Called it,’ she mouths back at him. 

“What’d I tell you?” Jonathan says, smiling at her like he’s known her his whole life. “Of course she likes you back. How could anyone not?”

El flushes, grinning to herself as she fiddles with Hopper’s bracelet. “We have to be careful, though,” she says gravely. “But I’m good at pretending; I told Mike I liked his haircut last week.”

Will laughs, and Robin nods like, ‘yeah, that’s impressive’, because even Steve hadn’t been able to tell the kid it looked good. The stylist or whatever had cut his bangs way too short, and the result was this weird, choppy-looking bowl cut that really would have suited Will better than Mike. It was, as Lucas had commented with no remorse, “fucking bizarre”. 

“You’ll be fine,” Steve tells her. “Max is a badass, and you have actual superpowers, so I think it’s safe to say you guys will be okay here.”

El smiles gratefully at him, and turns the volume back up as everyone settles back into their seats and Joyce meanders in holding a tray with several bowls of soup on it. Robin takes hers gingerly, thanking Joyce as she passes the tray to Jonathan, who doles out the rest of the bowls to Steve, Will, and El, smiling appreciatively at his mom. 

On the TV, Marty is saying, “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet, but your kids are gonna love it,” and Steve finds his mind wandering to the way Nancy had stared at Robin on the porch earlier, apologetic and flushed with embarrassment and what felt like something more, and the way El and Max had vanished from the kitchen into El’s room earlier in the day, giggling, and how Robin had wrapped her arms around Nancy with this little sigh he’s never heard her give before, and the weird pull in his chest when Jonathan had smiled, and it’s like he’s grasping at something, some web of yarn just out of his reach. 

“What the hell is a gigawatt?” Marty asks, and El mouths the words along with him. 

Robin sees, and shoots a tiny smile in Steve’s direction. 

Joyce settles down onto the floor beside Jonathan, and he leans his head tiredly against her shoulder. Steve can’t tear his eyes away from it for the rest of the movie. 

\---

“So. . . so how did it happen?” Steve asks Robin once they’re in bed in the guest room. The bedside lamp is still on, bathing the room in a milky yellow glow. Robin is laying flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling fan as it whirs above them. She’s been quiet since she’d said goodnight to El and the Byers family. 

Steve hopes he isn’t crossing a line here-- he cares about Robin a lot, and the part of him that would do anything for her just needs to know what went down with her parents. He’s been lying awake at night imagining the scenarios as she sleeps beside him, and it’s getting to this unbearable point-- the not-knowing-- and he just needs to know that she’s okay. That they weren’t explosive. That they didn’t scar her permanently. 

Robin sighs, a resigned sound, like she knew he’d ask sooner or later. She doesn’t look at him, just keeps her eyes on the fan as she opens her mouth to talk. 

“Well. . . they were bitching about the AIDS crisis again, which is nothing I haven’t heard from them before, you know-- that God’s raining down hellfire on the gays by afflicting them with the disease--but for some reason that night I just. . . couldn’t take it anymore. Sheila and her friends had cornered me in the hallway that morning at school, and I was just. . . it was like all this pressure that’s been building up and building up for the past year just made me snap. And I turned to them at the dinner table and finally just told them. And they just sat there for a second and part of me hoped they’d say it was okay, but then Mom started screaming and Dad dragged my suitcase out of the hall closet and told me to start packing, and she just kept yelling and yelling. . . about sin, and Hell, and I couldn’t find my denim jacket and I was just. I just wanted to get out.”

“Jesus Christ, Rob.”

“I know. I know, it was so stupid, I just slammed my hands down and yelled “I”M GAY!”, and they both just STOPPED. Like, dead silence. I couldn’t breathe.”

“No, that’s not stupid,” Steve says firmly, grabbing one of her hands; she’d started gesturing frantically as she recounted the story, something she does when she’s stressed. 

“You just told them the truth. It’s badass.”

“No,” Robin whispers, shaking her head more so at herself than at him. “All those years of hiding and pretending and throwing up a guard when they bring up dating and boys, and for what?” She scoffs. “Nothing. For nothing. I fucking outed myself in the heat of the moment and look where it got me.”

Steve tightens his grip on her hand, and she turns to face him. No tears tonight, just disappointment marring her face. She’s pissed at herself, and she shouldn’t be. 

“It got you away from them,” Steve tells her. “Which is a good thing, Rob, and I know it doesn’t feel like it, but in the grand scheme of things, this is what’s right.”

She sighs, scrubbing a tired hand over her face. 

“I know, it’s just. . . they weren’t all bad, y’know?”

Steve smiles sadly, nodding. He talks shit about his parents all the time-- their lack of a role in his life, their big-ass house that they never even really lived in, their money and how they use it. But sometimes he’ll come home to that house and fall into one of the living room armchairs and close his eyes and remember Christmases from when he was little-- so little that his parents still bought a real tree every year, and let him help them decorate it with tinsel and home-made ornaments, back before the dinner parties and mixers that turned Christmas into another spectacle. He’ll just lie there and let the highlight reel play like a supercut-- and it’s short, always ending on the night of his dad’s promotion, but it’s there. 

And he knows Robin has her own highlight reel. 

“One time,” she tells him in the stillness, “when I was, like, five, my dad and I went grocery shopping because my mom was sick, and he got this big shopping cart. Mom never got carts, she always just HAD to fit everything into those tiny-ass baskets-- but Dad got a cart, and he let me steer it around, which was kind of a dumb move because I was five and I’d never steered a shopping cart before so I kept veering into the aisles and knocking shit off the shelves, but he kept letting me push it around. . .” She smiles, eyes back on the ceiling like she’s reliving it. 

“And then he taught me how to stand on the bottom part of the cart and push off of the ground so that I was, like, flying down the aisles. . . And at some point I must’ve just forgotten how to stop, because I had the short-term memory of a fucking goldfish--”

“Still do,” Steve cuts in, and she laughs lightly, swatting at him. He feels a smile bloom on his face. 

“Shut up. Anyway, so I forget how to stop, and before my dad can, like, jump in front of the cart to stop it, I just go crashing into the produce section, and like-- I flew over the cart and fell right in the fucking bin with the apples in it--”

Steve cackles at this, picturing a tiny, five-year-old Robin flying into a giant bin of fruit-- it reminds him of their earlier conversation about the oranges, and it just makes him laugh harder. 

“So naturally I was having the time of my life,” Robin says, smiling, “but Dad was so fucking worried. He thought I’d gotten hurt or something, and, like-- I don’t know, I just remember him pulling me out of the bin and setting me on my feet, and fussing over me, like he was Mom or something. And I told him-- kept telling him, ‘Dad, I’m okay,’ and finally he was like, ‘Okay, good,’ but then he. . .”

“He what?” Steve prompts, noting that her expression’s sobered a bit. He can feel himself drifting, the pull of sleep weighing down his eyelids, but now that Robin’s not smiling anymore he needs to hear the rest of the story. Needs to make sure she doesn’t go to sleep with that look on her face. 

“He told me, ‘I’m never gonna let you fall like that again. No matter what, I’ll always be there to catch you.’”

‘Like a parachute,’ Steve’s sleep-muddled mind supplies. What a shitty promise to break. Like, ‘Oh, don’t worry, honey, I’ll always be there for you-- just until you go against my bigoted values. Then you’re on your own.’ It makes him want to punch something. 

“God, Robin, I’m so sorry,” he whispers, and she smiles sadly at him, patting his shoulder consolingly like he’s the one in need of comfort. 

“It’s okay, Dingus. I don’t need another safety net in my life-- I’ve got you.”

“Mhm,” he mumbles, eyelids fluttering. “You’re stuck with me, Rob. You know I can’t macromanage all those little dipshits all by myself.”

He hears Robin laugh beside him. “It’s ‘micromanage,’ idiot,” she says. 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he says dismissively. “Point is-- I’m with you for the long haul, okay? Got it?”

He hears her turn onto her side to face him again, feels a hand brush his hair off his forehead. Fuck, her hands are cold. What a freak.

“Got it, dingus.”

And he can hear the smile in her voice, so he lets sleep pull him under as the fan whirs above them and Robin finally settles back against the pillows.

\---

It rains hard the next morning. 

By the time Steve’s eyes are squinting open, it’s a torrential downpour, battering against the Byers’ tin roof and hitting the windows in silvery sheets. He stumbles out of bed, letting the sound of falling water pull him awake. He can hear Joyce moving around in the kitchen again, and he wonders if she’ll make him go back home today-- he hopes not. Steve likes waking up to noise. 

It’s kind of like spending the evenings at the Wheelers’ house-- there’s always something going on there, too-- clattering in the kitchen or the static-y hum of their perpetually-fucked-up TV or the sound of the kids bickering over their homework assignments. It makes him feel less alone. He wonders idly if Robin feels it, too. 

When he meanders into the kitchen, Robin and El are twirling each other around the kitchen to some Jim Croce record Hopper’s put on. The chief is sitting at the kitchen table, probably here to take El home. They’ve stayed in the little cabin despite the extensions Joyce had made on the Byers’ house when they moved back to Hawkins. Steve knows he’s waiting for the right time to ask Joyce to move in together, and it’s one of his and Robin’s favorite topics of conversation when there’s a slow day at Family Video. 

Hopper smiles a little awkwardly at Steve, then turns back to watch the girls whirl around the kitchen as Joyce flips apple turnovers on the stove. 

“‘You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind--’” El shrieks, nearly careening into Joyce as she spins on one heel. Robin cackles and pulls her to the middle of the kitchen floor, doing this weird little step-ball-change thing that makes Steve choke on the coffee Hopper hands him. 

“‘You don’t pull! The mask! Off that ol’ lone ranger--’” Robing sings, twirling El around.

“‘And you don’t mess around with JIM!’” They finish in unison, El pivoting around to point at Hopper, who jumps out of his seat and does this stupid air-guitar move that makes everyone laugh. 

Will and Jonathan emerge from their rooms, rubbing sleep out of their eyes, and Steve smiles at their baffled expressions, bounding into the kitchen to join El and Robin in their little dance. Joyce is bobbing her head to the beat as she piles the turnovers onto a big plate, skating around El, Steve, and Robin to set it on the kitchen table as Hopper starts the record over again and shuffles into the kitchen. 

Hop’s doing this bizarre rendition of the “running man”, and Will laughs as Joyce gapes at him. 

“Oh my God,” Jonathan mutters, grabbing a turnover from the plate on the table and settling into a chair to observe from afar. Steve rolls his eyes as he crashes into Robin, who’s jumping up and down in this crazy circle like a maniac. 

“C’mon, Jonathan!” He yells over the music, miming reeling him in as El shrieks with laughter. “You know you wanna dance to this! It’s a classic!”

“A classic!” El echoes gleefully, bounding over to Jonathan and pulling him to his feet. They twirl into the kitchen, and Jonathan glares at Steve as Robin laughs. 

The piano rises above the patter of rain outside, and Hopper pulls Joyce into the weird little shindig they’ve got going on, twirling her around as Will fake-retches at them.

“‘You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind!’” Steve yells over the music, laughing when Robin claps a hand over his mouth. 

Eventually, the record ends, and they stumble to the table, falling into chairs as El and Will keep singing. Hopper crams two turnovers into his mouth immediately, and Joyce winces like it’s physically pained her as El copies him. 

“Leave some for the rest of us, you fiend,” Will tells her, laughing when she glares at him. 

Once they’re done demolishing their breakfast, Steve and Robin help clear off the table and straighten up the kitchen with Jonathan as Joyce switches on the lamps. The rain is continuing its onslaught, and Hopper and El have decided to just wait the storm out before making the drive back to their cabin. 

While Robin and Jonathan banter about this show they’re both obsessed with, Steve slips out of the kitchen to find Joyce. 

She’s in the living room, shoving Will’s colored pencils back in their case. The kid likes to “spread out” all his shit on the coffee table at night and draw when he can’t sleep, but the second he gets tired, he’ll just leave it all there and stumble to bed. Mike told Steve this when he’d been babysitting once and woke up to art supplies scattered across the Wheeler’s kitchen island. 

“Need any help?” Steve asks by way of greeting, dropping into a crouch beside her to pick up a few pencils from where they’ve rolled onto the floor. 

Joyce smiles at him. “Thank you, Steve; it’s my job, though.”

“I just. . . I just feel bad for taking up space here. I can leave today if you want, y’know, I’m sure Robin will be fine staying at my place with me now that she’s calmed down--”

“Oh honey,” Joyce says, her brows furrowing. “No. No, you stay here for as long as you want.”

“I just know it’s not convenient for you--”

“Steve,” Joyce says, her voice firmer than he’s ever heard it, “You may have taken care of yourself for a while in that house, but as far as I’m concerned, you’re still a kid. And so is Robin-- God, she’s still in school with Jonathan. And that means you need to be staying somewhere that feels like a home, with people that you trust. And if that’s here, then I’m more than willing to provide.”

He’s choking up, and he shouldn’t be, because she’s just saying this-- in a few weeks, she’ll be sending him back home, and Robin will stay here, and it’ll be back to waking up to crushing silence and cold tile floors and empty kitchens. Eating cereal he’s bought on a discount and possibly-expired milk from the back of his fridge, flicking aimlessly through channels on TV, waiting for Dustin or El or Max to call him, cleaning the pool and trying not to think about Barb when he digs leaves out of the deep end. Suddenly all Steve can think about is Jonathan leaning his head against Joyce’s shoulder the other night, and how he can’t have that, because she’s not his mom, his mom is away on “business” that isn’t really business, and God knows when or if she’ll ever be back. Joyce isn’t his mom, she isn’t his mom, she isn’t--

There’s a hand on Steve’s shoulder, and suddenly his back is against the coffee table because he’s slumped against the floor, and Robin and Jonathan have stopped talking in the kitchen, and he can hear Joyce saying something to him but he can’t even hear himself think because the last thing he wants to do is go back home alone in a week--

Suddenly someone else is kneeling in front of him, and he can hear Joyce protesting beside him, and then there’s a sharp stinging that flares across his cheek, and Jesus Chirst, Jonathan just slapped him!

“What the hell,” Steve chokes out. 

“Sorry, sorry-- God, dude, I didn’t know what else to do,” Jonathan says frantically, tilting Steve’s chin up to examine the damage. Joyce is staring at her oldest son like he’s grown an extra arm, and it would make Steve laugh if he wasn’t still reeling from the shock of it. 

“Jonathan!”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Jonathan says, his voice pleading. “He was panicking. Had to snap it out of him somehow.”

“I think he’s STILL panicking a little, dude,” Robin says, kneeling down and shoving Jonathan out of the way, and Steve can feel his heart start to race because there are so many people just crowding into his space, he just needs space--

“Hey,” Robin says in the whispery voice she reserves for either very small children or Steve when he’s freaking out because of a nightmare, which is a little insulting, but he’s not in any position to bitch about it. “Try to match your breaths with mine, okay?”

And she breathes in deep, exhaling for a long moment, and Steve tries to copy her as Joyce fusses at Jonathan in a hushed tone. 

Once he feels like he’s rooted back in his body and his hands have stopped shaking, Robin hugs him, and he lets his head fall onto her shoulder for a moment because he’s tired, dammit, and somehow it’s still raining outside even though it feels like he’s been sitting on Joyce’s living room floor for ten years.  
When Robin pulls back, Joyce puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder. Her eyes are searching his face like she’s trying to figure him out, and it makes this awful guilty feeling swell up in his chest. She’s been letting him stay at her house for the past three days, and now he’s having full-on panic attacks on her living room floor. Way to not be a burden, Harrington. 

“I’m sorry,” he mutters, and Joyce gasps quietly. 

“Oh no, honey-- you don’t have anything to apologize for. Please don't think that.”

“But I do, though,” he says. “It’s fine, I’ll just-- I’ll go--”

“No, you won’t,” Jonathan says. “You’re staying here, man. We can’t let you leave after whatever that was, got it?”

“But I’m just burdening you,” Steve says, squeezing his eyes shut when Joyce winces. “You don’t want me here, I’m just here for Robin, and eventually I’m just gonna have to go back home and go back to eating breakfast by myself and having no one to say good morning or good night to and sleeping with the hall light on and I know it’s just how it has to be but that doesn’t make it any easier, and-- and--”

God, he needs to shut up. He never says shit like this unless he’s joking around, and Robin always follows it up with some quip about her parents disowning her, and now that he’s being serious about it it feels so much worse. 

“Hey,” Jonathan says, kneeling down so that they’re eye-level, “you’re not going back there, okay? We’re not making you go back.”

Behind him, Joyce nods, and Steve feels his heart clench in his chest. 

“Steve,” Joyce says, “tomorrow we’re going to sit down and do some job-hunting-- real job-hunting, because Family Video isn’t gonna bring in enough to pay rent for an apartment. There are some apartments near the edge of town that are available to be leased out, so if we can get you a higher-paying job, you’ll be able to get your own place. But for now, there’s no rush, kiddo. You’re staying with us, and so is Robin, and if she wants to move in with you when you find your own place, that’s fine, too. But for right now, you’re staying here.”

Steve nods, and it’s like he’s hearing her for the first time-- Joyce wouldn’t lie to him about this, wouldn’t go back on her word and send him back to his house. She wants to help him find a better job. She wants to help him find an apartment. She wants to help him, and Jonathan’s nodding like he does, too, and suddenly Steve feels a little lighter. 

“Okay,” he breathes. “Okay. Okay. That’s. . . that’s really good to hear.”

“Yeah?” Jonathan says, smiling a little, and Steve feels this pull in his chest. 

“Yeah,” he says, and then Robin grabs both his hands in hers and pulls him to his feet.

Joyce is still looking at him with this soft concern, so much like the expression she’d worn the night he and Robin showed up on her doorstep, and he wants to hug her. 

As Jonathan apologizes again for slapping him, which, now that Steve thinks about it, was kind of hilarious, Will and El bound into the living room, talking over each other excitedly about making perogies for dinner because El’s never had them.

Hopper saunters in behind the kids, sighing resignedly like he’s tried to talk them out of it. 

“Wouldn’t you guys rather order a pizza?” He tries, and El scowls at him like he’s suggested they go hunting for deer or some shit. Steve bites back a smile. 

“Now, hold on,” Joyce says, and the kids quiet down, bouncing on the balls of their feet. 

“I think we have the ingredients to make them,” she says, smiling as the kids follow her to the kitchen, and Hopper scrubs a tired hand over his face before trailing behind them. 

“For the record,” Robin says once she and Steve and Jonathan are the only ones left in the living room, “Jonathan slapping you was a total badass move. If I wasn’t more attracted to his girlfriend than him, I’d be into him for sure--”

Jonathan cackles, and Steve feels something warm bloom in his chest. 

“Christ, Rob, you can’t say shit like that-- Jonathan, you gotta keep her away from Nance. I swear, she’s such a flirt-- no one is safe.”

“The sheer irony of Steve calling ME a flirt-- God, straight men are a different breed,” Robin says, laughing as Jonathan doubles over.

Before Steve can say something snappy about never specifying his sexuality, El calls for them to “get their asses in the kitchen”, and Steve grins when he hears Hopper mutter something about having raised a girl with a sailor’s mouth. 

“I think that’s Dustin’s influence more than anyone else’s,” Robin says as they trail into the kitchen. 

“Oh, yeah,” Jonathan agrees. “The other day he called Mike a “shitbird”, which, like, I had to ask Nancy about because I’d never even heard it used as an insult before. The kid’s got a colorful vocabulary.”

“You think he’s bad, you should hear Erica when she’s mad at Lucas,” Steve says, and Robin gapes at him before bursting into laughter as Joyce tries to explain to El how to make the perogies and Hopper teaches Will how to make the “perfect spit ball” out of the napkins strewn across the kitchen counter.

Jonathan races over to the record player in the corner as the rest of them crowd around the stove, putting on “Don’t Mess Around With Jim” again, and as the piano and guitar drifts through the room and the rain patters steadily on the windows and Robin mouths the words to the song despite only having heard it twice this morning, Steve feels more at home than he ever did in his own house. 

\---

“I think Joyce Byers is magic,” Robin tells him a week later. They’re sitting in the two rocking chairs on her porch, looking out at the horizon as the sun sets behind the trees. El’s made them tea again, this warm vanilla kind that feels like watching a blizzard from your living-room window. 

Steve nods. He’s started circling jobs in the newspapers that Joyce has delivered to her house every day, and he’s got a few good leads already. He’ll go in for an interview two days from now in a borrowed button-up and slacks (thank God for Jonathan), but for now he’s content staying where he is. 

“Oh, totally,” he says. “She’s like a guardian angel.”

“Yeah,” Robin breathes mystically, sipping on her tea and tucking her knees up against her chest as the November wind ruffles her hair. 

A few moments drag by, stretching between them as the sun slips away and the porch light becomes their only source of light. Joyce has wisteria and jasmine growing around the porch, and it drifts like perfume through the air despite the winter chill. 

“Y’know,” Robin says, breaking the peaceful silence. “I think. . . I think getting kicked out was maybe the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Steve turns to look at her, because that’s kind of a bold statement, but he gets it-- the Byers’ house is like a familial paradise for their neglected asses. Especially Rob. Steve knows that finally being in a home that accepts her is probably doing wonders for her mental health, but they’ve never broached the subject this directly before. 

“Like, if I really make myself think about it, even if my parents had let me stay with them, nothing would have been the same, y’know? They would've been cold and awkward and disapproving around me, and I wouldn’t be able to talk openly about girls, and I wouldn’t have you around all the time,” she says sincerely, and Steve feels his heart squeeze in his chest at that last part. 

“I get that,” he says, smiling at her. “Yeah, I kinda. . . I mean, to be honest, I’ve never been happier with my living situation, either,” he says, laughing a little at himself. Robin does, too, sighing as she watches a car pass the house. 

“Like I said-- Joyce is magic.”

“Obviously,” Steve nods, finishing off his tea and letting his eyes flutter shut. 

They sit there in silence as the crickets start to chirp, and Steve only opens his eyes when the front door squeaks open. 

Jonathan steps out onto the porch, smiling at Robin-- she’s fallen asleep clutching her mug, which she’s thankfully downed already. He takes it from her, and she doesn’t stir. 

“Enjoying the view?” He asks Steve, squinting out into the inky blackness that’s swallowed up the Byers’ front yard. 

“Oh yeah,” Steve says, letting out a long sigh as he gets to his feet. “There’s something about pitch darkness that just really takes my breath away.”

Jonathan laughs lightly, and it makes Steve think of windchimes for some reason. Fuck, he’s tired. 

“Rob,” Steve says quietly, shaking her shoulder a little. Jonathan snickers as she blinks away, glaring up at Steve like he’s poured her tea on her or some shit. 

“I was sleeping, dingus.”

“Yeah, exactly-- you wanted us to just leave you out here to die of hyperthermia or some shit?”

“It’s ‘hypothermia’,” Jonathan whispers, and Steve sighs like he’s Hopper and Jonathan is El correcting his grammar. The kid is turning into a vivacious reader-- it’s actually kind of scary. She’s almost as bad as Nancy. 

“Whatever,” Steve scoffs. “Open the door already, it’s fucking freezing out here.”

Jonathan rolls his eyes, but still lets Steve in first before he follows him in, holding the door for Robin as she stumbles inside. 

Robin’s looking better these days-- the circles under her eyes are gone, and the bruise on her cheek has faded so fast it’s barely visible unless she’s under the overhead lights in the kitchen. Steve watches her ruffle Will’s hair as she plops down beside him on the couch and feels this ridiculous warmth blooming in his chest. It takes him a second to shake himself out of his reverie, and then Jonathan’s tugging him down onto the couch beside Robin and Will and they’re switching on the TV to some rerun of Night Rider.

After the episode changes, Will and Joyce amble into the room and settle in the armchairs on either side of the couch. El’s whispering something to Robin about Max, like she’s been doing lately; she’ll blush and smile this soft little smile that seems reserved just for the topic of Max, and Robin will listen with this beaming smile that makes her look like the sun. 

Jonathan notices, and Steve catches a flicker of a smile on his face. He looks so. . . soft in the dim lighting of the TV, illuminated only by the glow of whatever Steve’s supposed to be watching, all doe eyes and fluffy hair, and Steve forces his eyes away as the program drones on. 

He’s staring at his lap when a weight settles on his shoulder-- it’s Robin, slumping against him as El finally stops talking and focuses on Family Ties, where some character Steve can’t remember the name of is talking shit about Reagan. He smiles, bringing his arm around Robin’s shoulders as she settles against him. 

Over the TV, Steve can hear it start to rain outside-- not a downpour like it’d been all those days ago when Robin had called him from a phone-booth, or the day he’d panicked on the living room floor and gotten the shit slapped out of him, but a gentle trickle that’s faint enough to lull him into a haze of half-sleep. 

Robin’s hair smells like oranges, and he presses a kiss to it as the sudden warmth of Jonathan’s hand in his and the pattering of the rain and the quieting of the TV (El’s turned the volume down for them) weigh down his eyelids more and more. 

The room smells like cinnamon, and it’s crowded and small and filled with his favorite people, so different from his empty carcass of a house three blocks away, and Steve looks down at Robin and sees that she’s smiling in her sleep.

“You’re stuck with us,” he tells her, and lets his eyes flutter shut as Joyce drapes a blanket over all of them. 

“So are you,” she mumbles a second later. 

And despite what he’d have them believe, Steve wouldn’t have it any other way.


End file.
